Elliot Ackerman; The case for Female SEALs
TSO sends us a link to an article written by Elliot Ackerman. First I should say that Elliot Ackerman is an authentic hero of the war against terror. he was a Marine, earned one each Bronze and Silver Star and a Purple Heart. But this thing that he wrote for The Atlantic is garbage. He says that instead of sending women to infantry schools to find out what they can handle physically, they should send women to SEAL and Special Forces Schools.
Last month, three women became the first of their sex to graduate from the Marine Corps’ famously grueling Advanced Infantry Training Course. The Marine Corps was asking a simple question by running small groups through these courses in experimental test batches, two to five women at a time: Can the female body withstand the rigors of infantry training? The answer, these women showed, is that it can.
Ackerman is misrepresenting the process – the Marines asked for female volunteers, only 14 volunteered and throughout the course all but four dropped. The fourth injured herself after she completed the course requirements, so three showed up for the graduation ceremony. There were no “test batches” – that was what they had.
So far much of the debate surrounding integration has focused on the physical capabilities of women, as if this were the singular issue. Admittedly the strain of infantry training, or even combat, is relatively easier for a 6-foot tall, 180-pound man, but there are women fit enough to survive these punishing courses. As for combat, well, if we’ve proved anything over the last decade of war, it’s that women can sustain its rigors.
So if the barrier to integrating women into the infantry isn’t a physical one then what is it?
It’s cultural. And that’s why the infantry may not be the best place to start in military gender integration. Instead, as counterintuitive as it might sound, the military should begin with its Special Operations Forces: elite units such as the Green Berets and SEALs. Although not the obvious move, starting here would likely make for a smoother transition over all.
No, Mr Ackerman, it’s physical – that’s why ten female Marines didn’t finish the course, it has nothing to do with the culture. You don’t understand the discussion because you think that the Marines are sending though “test batches” of women. They’re sending all they have and two thirds dropped out. Sending them to tougher and more vigorous isn’t going to change that.
If you think it’s a culture thing that’s holding women up, you might make sense, but it’s nature that’s holding them up from completion. 56% of women Marines graduating from boot camp can’t do three F’n pull ups – at a time in their lives that they’re more in good physical shape than ever before.
The women who pass through the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course or the Army Ranger School are going to be pretty tough—they’ll have to be. The problem won’t be them. The problem will be convincing the 19-year-old grunts to accept their presence. Grunts are trained to believe they’re the toughest thing wearing two combat boots, a conviction that helps them withstand the brutality that is the very essence of their job. But most will concede there is one thing tougher than them: the special operator.
And therein lies a solution.
The culture of our Special Operations Forces values physical toughness, but it puts its highest premium on attributes such as creative thinking and maturity. The average special operator is in his late twenties. In fact, women already serve in significant, albeit restricted capacities, among the most elite and secretive special operations communities in the Joint Special Operations Command and Central Intelligence Agency. By contrast, in an infantry battalion, women aren’t even allowed to have their names on the rolls.
Yeah, and if we all close our eyes, click our heels together three times and wish real hard, companies of women are going to show up for Ranger School and graduate. Because that’s what Mr Ackerman is asking us to believe. He doesn’t want to recognize women’s physical differences, he only wants to blame the macho culture for their failures.
Category: Dumbass Bullshit
“Physiology can be modified by training and acclimation” ???
Sure thing. I’ll be standing by for someone to “train” and “acclimate” a house cat to pull the Budweiser wagon alongside some giant Clydesdale. Guess we could species-norm the load the feline caries so weirdo cat people feel good about themselves. After all that is what this BS is about. People who hold their belonging to a certain group and good vibes they feel when one of “their own” succeeds, over the goal of making the US military the most efficient killing machine possible.
@52 – Now you’re being ridiculous.
A team of Siberian tigers, weighing an average of 600 pounds each and being extremely smart, could not only pull the Budweiser wagon, but they would kill and eat the Clydesdales to do so. And please note that when you refer to the Budweiser wagon, it is always pulled by an 8-up hithc of Clydesdales, not just ONE Clydesdale. Besides, everybody knows that a 2-up hitch of Shire horses can win a stoneboat pull competition over Clydesdales, Percherons and Belgians every time.
Housecats, on the other hand, have no interest in being trained for anything other than stuffing themselves, sleeping on your clothing, and scratching the furniture.
Motivation is everything in training. Or didn’t you know that?
Thanks for the correcting me on the field of wagoneering. Not sure how we got to talking about Siberian tigers however, saying “Physiology can be modified” really only makes you look like a fantasy writer. After all, as a male human, I cannot be “trained” or “acclimated” enough in a 1000 years to bear a child. Sorry, no motivation level will change that. From your response you seem to make the charge that the ONLY reason house cats can’t pull a wagon is because they are only interested in stuffing themselves, sleeping, and scratching furniture (how dare you attack feline motivation!) If so I am going to not bother responding as you will forever only deflect facts and logic facts in order to satisfy a selfish notion that makes you feel good.
@54, I said you were being ridiculous. You obviously know nothing about housecats. What’s the problem?
OH, yes – in regard to a man ‘bearing’ a child, there have been two instances in which women who had no uterus carried an embryo to full gestation, because the fertilized eggs implanted themselves on the small intestine and were ‘fed’ by nutrients delivered through intestinal wall.
How is this possible? Glad you asked.
When they were having hysterectomies, their ovaries were not removed, just the uterus, and the ovaries continued to produce ova (eggs), which migrated normaly to the vagina, where they were fertlized during sex, and because the neck of the vagina was not closely properly by the surgeon, the fertilized eggs migrated through the opening across the small distance to the small intestine.
This may be a peculiarity, but since a uterus is less necssary for pregnancy than a nutrient source, the small intestine sufficed in both cases. Which goes to show, in plain English, that a man can, if indeed he wishes and accepts the hormonal therapy necessary to do so, carry a child to full-term and give birth by Caesarian section.
Those were two case studies in my Anatomy and Physiology class in college. <3 <3 <3
@55 When a man has a baby the world news headlines will read, “First Man In History Has Baby, Says-Didn’t Hurt That Bad. I’ve Had Ingrown Toenails Hurt Worse!” 😀 😀 😀
On the serious side my grandmother said it was “like shitting a wooden porch rocker, with arms and legs going everywhere”.
@56 – Laughed my socks off!
@40, the simple fact of women’s bones being less dense would make Ranger school damn near impossible with out breaking something. i would be in utter shock to meet a woman whos bones can hold up to mountain phase alone. im a 6’2″ 210lb guy in fantastic shape. never had a PT test i didnt max, and i thought i was going to die in Ranger School, i was with several men of incredible drive and ability that i thought in better shape then me that got broken. If there is a woman out there that can pass the current standards of Ranger School, she is some sort of freak of nature, and id love to meet her.
i have been informed that RIP has been changed to something called rasp and the standards are no longer enforced allowing for a 80%+ graduation rate, so i guess anyone can do it now
@55 All very interesting but in order to relate this back to the original point; those two women had butt babies not from some superhuman level of motivation, nor training, nor acclimation. It was due to advances in medical science (or maybe sheer accident). And again, focusing this back to the original point, theses women had ovaries to begin with. While human males do have small intestines, a man categorically cannot be “motivated” to grow a pair of ovaries and gestate human fetus in his ass. That said, I will concede to you that medical science can probably eventually progress enough to someday tweak women’s physiology enough to let them be outstanding Infantrymen.
PS you are an expert and well seasoned flamebaiter when you want to be. Tip of the hat to you.
id like some link to this study. ive never heard of such an event, and there are some physical impossibilities that go along with a child growing on a woman’s small intestine, mainly the survival of the mother through the entire process of gestation.
@59 – Then you’ve never heard of in vitro fertilization? Donated eggs? Ovaries are only necessary to produce ova. Women who want to wait to have babies while they grow their careers are having their eggs surgically harvested by forced ovulation and frozen, just as men do who want to donate sperm at a sperm bank. Those are biological children. There is some doctor whose donated sperm has created 150++ children; he’s their biological father, not the actual parent.
What I was pointing out is that if a man is motivated by a real desire to actually carry an embryo to full term, it’s scientifically possible, even though it’s not a good idea to mess that way with what Nature gave you. Men can, after all, develop breast cancer just as women do. I doubt that any man could be forced into wanting to carry a baby to full-term and then undergo a C-section, just to say “I did that”.
And for the record, the embryo/fetus/infant is carried in the abdomen, not in the buttocks. The abdomen contains all major organs associated with digestion, elimination and reproduction.
Your entire butt, on the other hand, is made up of layers of large and small muscles that not only allow you stand upright and walk, but also thrust harder when you’re getting laid.
OMG, Smitty, that was back in the 1970s, when I was in college. I don’t know if there’s even a reference to it anywhere. But I’ll look.
Oi… Big gulps huh? All right. Welp, see ya later.
Smitty, I did find one reference to an intraabdominal pregnancy in the New England Journal of Medicine from 2003.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMicm020681
Usually, what happens after a partial hysterectomy (uterus removed, ovaries remain) is that a pregnancy can occur and the fertilized egg migrates to the Fallopian tubes, where it becomes an ectopic pregnancy, which is very dangerous. Occasionally, the fertilized egg will migrate and attach to the abdominal wall or other organs. It is rare, but it does happen.
And the small intestine is loaded with exterior blood vessels. The small intestine is where all the nutrients are extracted from the food you eat and filtered through the intestinal wall to blood vessels, which carry both nutrients and water to the rest of your body to keep it running. The large intestine is the last stop, where remaining water is mostly extracted and produces that brown stuff used as a cuss word.
So, @63, big gulps – not so much. :PPPPPPPP Just a little digging for something more recent than the 1970s on my part.
How did this convo go from Women in the Infantry to asshole babies?
@65 – Don’t ask. I don’t know.
A million years ago-
If you were not MAXING or coming close to maxing the 17-21 y/o PT test (for males) your chance in passing the Q Course was <10%. There were always a guy or two who would sandbag the PT test to "conserve themselves" for the long haul. They stood out immediately and were an exception rather than the rule. A lot of unwanted heat was brought on themselves for trying to outfox the system. Anyway that was just the PT test just TO GET IN for training! BTW- you had to be airborne qualified and 6 pullups were the requirement then to graduate (since waived because of the female factor).
Many are Klueless when it comes to SOF. I guess you had to be there and had done it. It is NOT what you think, or read or watch on the Military Channel…just because you were in the military, you really have no concept. I don't give a rat's ass how many years you have in a boiler room, leg unit etc. It is a different deal altogether.
Question- Do you recycle women because they are pregnant or RTU?
@65 – maybe someone mentioned lawyers?